


One For The Devil

by Anonymous



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Demons, Anonymized because this was good writing, Based on a Tumblr Post, Dark!Dipper, Kinda, M/M, True Neutral Dipper?, but the pairing is starting to Sometimes Make Me Slightly Uncomfortable, i like the dynamic and things out of canon but yeah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-10
Updated: 2016-02-10
Packaged: 2018-05-19 11:46:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5966239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dipper Pines is ten when he starts reading from the book, twelve when he finishes, and fourteen when he summons a demon.</p><p>Dipper Pines is twenty-seven when he dies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One For The Devil

**Author's Note:**

> So anyone remember that text post? I forget exactly how it goes but it was something like "lonely person sells their soul to Satan to be their friend"? Can't find it anymore. Anyway, this is an AU based on that. Any questions about specific things I don't talk about (because it's canon divergent based on that fact), hit me up. 
> 
> The first fic I've really done in fifteen months and it's Gravity Falls trash. Help, I've fallen and I can't get up.

Dipper is ten when he first gives in and starts reading from the book in his great-uncle’s study.

He doesn’t get very far. Grunkle Ford is furious with him, yells at him ages about how reckless and dangerous it was, how there are things in that book he can’t ever know about. Dipper wants to ask what makes _him_ so special that he can, but he doesn’t, because he’s already grounded for a week and in the heat of the summer, with so much to explore in the woods, that’s the worst possible outcome of the conversation.

He doesn’t think about the book again for a while after he’s allowed back outside the house, focusing instead on putting his own observations into a spiral notebook, messy scribbles over the pages. And one night, after everyone has gone to bed, he draws what he remembers seeing in Ford’s book—triangles and ciphers and codes that make up half of what looks like a summoning ritual.

But what does he know? He’s just ten.

-O-

Dipper is twelve when he comes up with a much better plan to find the book again. He waits a long time for his opportunity—Ford can’t be around, for obvious reasons; Stan shouldn’t be around, because if he caught Dipper he’d tell Ford; if Mabel’s around, best to keep her out of the way. He finally gets his chance when Ford goes on a shopping run with Soos (something about “interacting with human society” and “practice”) and Stan and Mabel are outside, throwing water balloons at the trees. 

Dipper plays with them for a while, then excuses himself to go read (they moan about how he ruins their fun, but just wait ‘till he finds out what’s in the book) and scampers to Ford’s bedroom, picks the lock, and looks for the book.

It’s not where it was the last time, in the bottom drawer. It’s not in any of the other drawers, or under the bed, or on the bookshelf. Finally, Dipper yanks on a drawer hard enough in frustration that it comes out, and there’s the book—in the dark hollow under the desk.

He grins and grabs it, flipping through to find where he left off with one hand and fumbling for his spiral with the other. He gets to both, grabs a pen, and starts filling in what was remembered improperly or not at all.

The two-page spread finished, he starts transcribing more, getting through several different spreads (none quite as interesting as the first one, but he’ll read them all later) before he hears the familiar sound of the car pulling up, puts the book back where he found it, and locks the door on his way out.

-O-

Dipper is fourteen when he first thinks about using the summoning ritual. 

It’s been a bad day, in a lot of ways. To start it was one of those days when nothing seems like it will ever go right, and beyond that, he forgot his book bag and lunch, Mabel hadn’t had enough to make sure either of them got a decent meal (he couldn’t call his parents to take it to him, they both worked, it wasn’t allowed), he hadn’t been able to turn in any of his homework or the science lab report that was due today, absolutely no exceptions, 10%-of-the-grade; and while he was sure he could beg the teacher and explain the circumstances, he just didn’t have the energy to talk to anyone today. Not even Mabel, because while she was busy splitting her lunch with him, she was rapid-fire yelling at all of her own friends, and it got entirely too loud. 

A bad day.

He traces the lines and lettering on the pages of his spiral, the ritual meant to summon a high-ranking demon—all you want in life for the price of your soul. Dipper’s not sure if he believes in souls. Or demons, or gods—but he’s seen stranger things in the woods around Gravity Falls every summer, so what does he know?

What’s a soul worth anyway? If there’s no life afterward—and Dipper’s pretty sure he’s not going anywhere good to start with, now that he’s dabbling in magic with Ford and practicing cantrips to do his chores—not to mention the other thing, isn’t that supposed to send you to hell—

It probably won’t work anyway. 

It’ll probably do nothing and he’ll have gotten his hopes up.

But he pulls out the chalk and retreats into the basement all the same, replicating the summoning circle onto the concrete floor, making trips back upstairs for his mother’s scented bathroom candles. Mabel’s at drama practice; his parents are still at work. No one to bother him.

He mutters the words of the ritual, quick and quiet, but as clearly as he can manage; and the room goes grey, faint hints of black at the corners of his vision like he’s about to pass out.

“Hey there!” comes a voice from nowhere. Dipper looks around, and finally he sees it—a floating triangle with one eye and a top hat. That’s not what he’d expected at all. “Been a while since someone got a summoning right! Come to think of it, you look an awful lot like the last guy….”

It circles Dipper, peering at him. “So, Pine Tree,” he continues, flicking Dipper’s blue and white hat off of his head, “mind if I call you Pine Tree? I’m gonna anyway. I’m guessing you want to make a deal, if you summoned me. Care to give me the details?”

Dipper gulps, steels himself, looks up at the demon. “I want a friend,” he says quietly. “Someone to stay with me for the rest of my life—who, who I won’t ever have to worry about leaving, and who will always be there for me so I can be there for them too. Someone for forever. They’ve, they’ve got to be real, so I don’t have to go around alone anymore. C-can you do that?”

The demon’s eye widens, and it giggles. “Sure I can, Pine Tree! Standard price—all that for the price of your soul, no tricks or backsies on either side?”

“Sure.” Dipper looks at the demon, a little emboldened now that things are going so well. “So….how does this work?”

The demon holds out a skinny black arm. “Just shake!” it says encouragingly as the hand lights up in blue flame. 

Dipper takes it anyway, gives a good shake, and wakes up on the floor in the middle of the smudged chalk of the summoning circle, candles extinguished, five minutes before his parents are due to arrive back home. He rushes to clean it all up and everything is presentable by the time they go in the door.

Maybe it hadn’t happened after all. He had been asleep.

-O-

The next day there is a new kid in Dipper’s class. His name is William-call-me-Bill-Cipher, he has an eyepatch over his right eye, and immediately after being introduced to the class he strides through the aisles of desks and sits right next to Dipper.

Dipper stares at him. William-call-me-Bill-Cipher stares right back, grinning widely. 

“Hiya,” he says. His teeth are white, and slightly pointed. His black hair is shot with a gold streak, his eyes gold (that had to be a trick of the light—still impressive, though). “I’m Bill.”

He holds out a hand.

After a moment, Dipper takes it.

“I’m Dipper,” he says, and the handshake feels warm and inviting, a little like coming home.

-O-

Dipper is eating lunch alone—Mabel’s table is full, it happens sometimes—and Bill comes up and sits right down next to him and starts eating apple slices and caramel. Dipper stares.

“Don’t you have anything healthy?” he asks before realizing that that’s probably not what you ask someone you just met.

Bill doesn’t seem to mind. “Apples are healthy.”

“You have apples and caramel and—nothing else.”

Bill grins, shark-toothed and cheeky. “So?” He holds out an apple slice to Dipper, the end coated in caramel.

Dipper pauses, laughs a little, and takes it.

-O-

Bill continues to hang out with Dipper, even as it becomes clear that everyone else avoids him like the plague (Mabel’s friends aside—but they don’t really count, they’re there because of Mabel). He has a tattoo and two piercings in each ear, and he is emancipated from his parents.

Dipper is there when he tries to explain this to the secretary.

“We really need your parents in here to finalize your transfer,” she is saying. Dipper sits in an office chair, because really, he’s got nothing better to do during free period than let Bill drag him around. They usually end up in the library anyway.

“I’m emancipated,” Bill announces, with his trademark wide smile. 

The secretary looks at him doubtfully. “Do you have the paperwork?”

He does.

She looks down at it. “This says you were emancipated when you were three years old.”

“Yes.”

“Get out of here!”

Dipper and Bill are kicked out of the office, laughing all the way. “Doesn’t matter,” Bill says breezily. “It checks out, they’ve gotta let me stay.”

“Were you really emancipated when you were three?”

“My mom didn’t like responsibility. Soon as I hit thirteen she up and left.”

“Where do you live?”

“I have an apartment. Got an aunt of mine to cosign.”

Dipper stares in abject awe. Bill is _fourteen_ , just like he is, and he has everything put together. More put together than most adults. It’s crazy.

“Wow,” he says finally.

Bill laughs. “It’s not a huge place.”

“How do you pay for it?”

“Mom still sends me money time to time. Quite a bit of it, actually. Rich family.”

Bill is fourteen years old and emancipated. He has a tattoo and four piercings in his ears alone, and he has gold streaks in dark hair and an eyepatch and is impossibly cool.

And he’s hanging out with Dipper anyway.

Dipper traces the lines of the summoning circle in his notebook that night and mouths “thank you” to whatever triangle demon might be listening.

-O-

Dipper is fifteen. He and Bill are seeing the midnight premiere of _Age of Ultron_ , and then Bill is sleeping over.

They come stumbling back into the house at three in the morning, laughing loud enough to wake a very annoyed Mabel, and end up crashing on Dipper’s bed together. 

Bill is surprisingly cuddly.

In the morning, Dipper’s mom makes them pancakes. Bill drenches his in maple syrup, just like Mabel does, and she shows him how to arrange sprinkles on top for the “perfect ratio of sprinkle to pancake”. Dipper uses an ordinary amount of syrup and watches them laugh.

He’s strangely contented, because while Mabel is taking over the scene as she usually does, it’s fine. Bill spent the night over for his sake, not Mabel’s, and just because people tend to like Mabel better doesn’t mean Bill will too.

When Bill follows him upstairs to scour the Internet for theories on the movie, and Mabel leaves to go to some new craft supply store with her friends, happiness briefly floods Dipper’s heart, and then comes back and camps there.

-O-

Dipper is almost sixteen and Bill is coming with him and Mabel to Gravity Falls. Mabel was allowed to bring someone too, but she kept talking about how she had friends there anyway, and she wanted to keep the worlds separate, so she didn’t bring anyone.

There’s a third bed in the attic. Mabel takes the one on the right side of the room, leaving Dipper on the left, as usual, and Bill in the new bed by the door—on the left side, too. 

Mabel’s concerned that Bill won’t Get It. Dipper understands her concerns. There’s something strange and magical about summers in Gravity Falls. They wear the same shorts every day and Mabel and Ford wear sweaters in hundred-three degree heat; they go swimming in the public pool and don’t care much about who else is there; they run barefoot around the yard and across the unfinished wood floors of the shack, read magazines when they’re meant to be working, climb trees. Dipper doesn’t shower. Mabel never brushes her hair and rarely changes her underwear. Wendy is always covered in sawdust and Soos doesn’t own more than one sweat-stained shirt. It’s a valid concern that an outsider won’t Get It, and Dipper agrees that if it doesn’t work out he’ll ask Bill to go home; keep summer and school separate like Mabel does.

(That’s the real reason Mabel doesn’t bring anyone. She tried to bring a girl named Macy the summer before last. It went awfully, and she didn’t bring anyone else again.)

But they learn very early on that they have nothing to worry about. Bill Gets It, in a way that Macy certainly did not. He doesn’t care how much or how little they bathe, that their feet are constantly dirty and that there are splinters around every corner and they spend the better part of each evening picking them out of their hands and feet. His favorite yellow shirt gets just as ratty as Dipper’s ever-present vest, and he wears Mabel’s proffered sweaters on top (Bill’s taller, but also stringier, so he sort of fits into the discards). All their jeans have holes in the knees. Ford has a new scar, and he shows them after a lot of bugging.

Bill meets Pacifica, Candy, and Grenda and hits it off spectacularly because everyone likes Mabel and can bond over that. He especially seems to like Pacifica, in a distinctly Bill-ish way; he’s not pulling pigtails exactly, but he’s rough around the edges, uncensored, comfortable in the same way Dipper gets around people he likes. You don’t talk to someone without thinking about it unless you like them, at least, Bill and Dipper don’t.

They go on mystery hunts, of course. Bill joins Dipper and Ford and is a pretty good help; when they end up running into a nest of mole-people, he convinces them to let them go (and then throws a smoke bomb down the hole) and when they’re captured by the unicorns to be held hostage for their gold back after the Unfortunate Events of Last Summer (wherein Mabel stole hair and Stan stole gold), Bill beats the ever-loving shit out of them.

He’s a bit more violent than Ford and Dipper, but Ford seems to enjoy it. Apparently when he was younger, Stan filled that role in the old trio. 

Bill dyes a sparkly blue streak in Dipper’s hair when Mabel dares him to one night (with Bill around, it’s perma-sleepover mode, and when the girls are around it’s Dipper’s worst nightmare), but it actually looks pretty good. They make tie-dye T-shirts and host three parties and a carnival, and Bill and Dipper together can figure out the majority of what Ford says about quantum physics.

The whole town comes to the birthday party because everyone comes to parties Stan Pines throws. Dipper dances with Bill. It’s the best birthday he’s had.

-O-

Dipper is seventeen and it’s almost the end of the graduation ceremony. Mabel is shifting in her seat beside him; rows up, Bill’s gold streak glints in the fluorescents of the college gym they’re renting out for the occasion. 

His own blue streak is still there. He’s thinking of getting a tattoo. Bill’s trying to convince him that this is a Great Idea, but he’s still not totally sold. 

Finally, it’s over and Bill catches up with them immediately, following them over to their parents. Dipper’s mom and dad have basically accepted that Bill will always be around Dipper; he told them a very dramatic version of the emancipation story he told Dipper, and that just about ended any argument that could’ve happened. 

“Where are you going to school next year, Bill?” Dipper’s mom asks as Mabel poses for pictures. 

Bill grins. “Northwest Oregon. Same as Dipper.”

Dipper’s mom blinks. “Dipper, you didn’t tell me that, sweetie,” she says.

“Didn’t know,” Dipper replies, because he didn’t. Bill dropped that bombshell and grinned and ushered Dipper off to take pictures with Mabel, and then solo pictures, and then a few of the three together, and that night when Bill is curled up in Dipper’s bed next to him, Dipper finally thinks to ask him why.

“Thought you might say no,” Bill said sleepily. “Like I’m just following you.”

“Are you?”

Bill shrugs, moving the sheets with his shoulders. “Kinda. I wasn’t gonna go to college otherwise.”

Dipper stares. “What were you gonna do?”

Bill laughs. “I’unno. Be a tattoo artist? Fortune teller?”

“Well….” Dipper rolls over to look at the back of Bill’s head. “I’m glad you decided to go with me. We’ll have to make sure we can room together.”

Bill nods, rolling over as well to face Dipper. “Good plan.”

-O-

Dipper’s eighteen and it’s his first real party, which Bill dragged him to, and everything is going okay until Bill pulls him close, alcohol on his breath and candy coated sweetness on his lips, and kisses him hard.

Then everything goes great.

-O-

Dipper’s twenty-two and moving the last of the boxes into the new apartment he’s sharing with his—boyfriend? Best friend? They don’t try to label themselves, what they have is strange—when Mabel tackles him and the box flies out of his hands, books scattering across the concrete.

By the time she’s gone and Dipper’s picking up the books, he realizes it’s best she did that. This box never would’ve been opened—hadn’t been before—and one of the books is the cheap spiral notebook he wrote all his notes in, back when he was exploring the supernatural and paranormal as a kid.

He flips through it idly, wondering if he should get back into that. Investigative reporting is great but it really isn’t the same.

He finds the ritual halfway through, and the memory comes back in a jolt. The night before Bill showed up in their class—he had tried it—

Nah. Couldn’t be. He was just a kid then, he was hoping for wish fulfillment and had made his own self-fulfilling prophecy—

But something nagged in the back of his mind about Bill, Bill who had no family Dipper had ever met, Bill who did whatever he wanted since they met at fourteen, Bill who followed Dipper as long as he wanted him around.

Then again, did it matter how he’d gotten there? He was there now, and Dipper had his best friend, his boyfriend, life partner, whatever.

-O-

Dipper and Bill are twenty-four and curled up lazily in bed when Dipper idly tells him the story. He doesn’t notice Bill stilling next to him until he rolls over. 

“What’s it?” he mumbles, eyes lidded.

“Nothin’, Pine Tree.” Bill’s hand tightens around his, looping the other arm around his waist and placing a leg over his. Dipper’s never been temperamentally inclined to be the little spoon but needs must when your boyfriend was a human koala. “Go back to sleep.”

Dipper drifts off, the memory faded in his mind of a triangle demon that called him Pine Tree and promised an eternal friend for his soul. 

-O-

Dipper is twenty-seven when he dies.

It’s very unfortunate. But at least now he gets to learn if he really had a soul at all.

-O-

He did.

-O-

They call the place where he is now the Nightmare Realm. It’s about as fun as it sounds.

That really makes him sound more chill with the whole thing than he is. 

It’s not just the physical bits, although that’s bad enough. It’s whispering to the dark. As long as he tells his story, they hold off, but he can’t leave anything out; if he leaves out a single thing, a single mistake, anything he’s done wrong, anything he knows about, any secrets, they begin again and then eventually he begins again. 

“What did you think when Mabel walked out that door?” the voices in the dark ask him, prodding him to continue.

“I thought I was sorry I had ever done anything to hurt her.”

Some time later.

“That was wrong.”

“I thought, now she won’t know I’m the one who killed the bastard who hit her.”

It’s good enough for them, he guesses, so they continue on, until he messes up again. The times between are awful as they ask him again and again. It’s not so easy as that time, it’s not always so easy to admit your secrets, your mistakes, to pull yourself down into darkness and admit to everything you ever thought, felt, did—

He’s not sure how long he’s floating in there. It feels like the moments between sleep and waking, when you feel your bed beneath you (if your bed was made of nails and thorns) but still see your dreams in front of you (if your dreams were of everyone you love screaming in pain, of Mabel being torn apart and Bill dying at the hands of some horrible monster and Stan and Ford shoving each other into walls until they’re bloodied and barely breathing, cursing each other and everyone else with their last breaths). It feels like the frustration right before he gets a code perfectly right. It feels like he’s being torn apart from the inside and everyone is laughing. It feels like a lot of things and none of them are good.

It feels like he knows he’s never been a very good person, but he never really wanted to be certain of that fact. It feels like now, he is. Now, he knows the truths hidden behind his blank face when Bill shoved a knife in the throat of a spider monster in the forest (Ford had been appropriately horrified. Dipper had thought very quietly _I could probably do that_ ), behind his protests and denial when he told Mabel no, he had no idea what had happened to her boyfriend, he hit you? What? That bastard, if he wasn’t already dead I’d kill him myself—

He knows that he’s not a good person, not at all, that he’s neutral to everything at best, and at his worst, that he _has_ killed someone (not a very _good_ someone, and Bill was the one who actually performed the final blow, but it’s still there), has hurt people, has practiced the kind of magic Ford never did in the darkness of the basement, has summoned a demon and sold his soul. 

The bed becomes a little more real, a little more solid, the day he hears footsteps.

It might be a day, or a night; it could’ve been weeks, or years. He’s not sure, but he knows what eternity feels like, now. At least a part of it. 

He doesn’t bother opening his eyes, almost certain this is yet another memory. 

“ _What’s this?_ ”

“ _A new recruit—made a deal, er, ‘bout thirteen years ago, came to collect a bit back--_ ”

“ _I thought I told you to send all the recruits through me for a little while._ ”

“ _Didn’t think you really meant--_ ”

“ _Ugh. It doesn’t matter, I’m demoting you. I’ll—I’ll deal with you later, it doesn’t matter!_ ”

And then there are slim arms picking Dipper up and cradling him gently against a warm, almost human chest, a quiet voice whispering in an unfamiliar language in his ear, singing a lullaby, and it’s so much more comfortable than where he’s been for however long that he curls into it. Trick or no trick, reprieve is a wonderful thing.

“Easy, Pine Tree,” a voice whispers in his ear, hushed. “I’ve got you.”

-O-

Dipper wakes up in the familiar bed of his apartment, with a familiar body next to him.

He knows it wasn’t all a dream, though. Couldn’t have been. He knows his mind, he knows what he dreams about, and it’s vivid, but never this vivid. 

He grabs Bill’s shoulder and rolls him over to face him.

It’s Bill, pretty much exactly as he remembers—with a few differences. His tattoo sleeves are full blackwork, and Dipper wonders if it goes under the glitter gold nail polish; the streak in his hair doesn’t have the ever-present dark roots it usually does. 

“You’re not Bill,” Dipper says, decisive, complete. 

Not-Bill opens his eyes lazily. “Nice to see you too, Pine Tree.”

“You’re not Bill,” Dipper repeats. “Bill’s not dead, and you’re not him. You got things wrong.”

Not-Bill sighs. “Well…you’re kind of right. Bill’s the one who got things wrong, which means I got them wrong, but you do what you can when in a fleshy meatsack.”

Dipper stares.

Not-Bill swings his legs over the end of the bed and stands up, letting the dress shirt that comprises his entire outfit fall almost to his knees. “We have a lot to talk about, Pine Tree,” he says, turning around and pulling down the collar.

Covering most of his collarbone and neck is a giant tattoo of some kind of cipher wheel. In the center is a triangle with an eye Dipper has seen once before.

“You wanted a friend,” Not-Bill says softly, reaching over and cupping Dipper’s chin in his hand. “I didn’t realize I did too.”

Dipper stares. “Explain.”

“You were never very subtle.” Bill sits back on the bed, crossing his legs. “When you were fourteen years old, you summoned a demon lord so you could have a friend. You remember that.”

“Yes.”

“That demon did not tell you his name.”

“No.”

“And then the next day you get a new kid in your class, who wants to spend time with you and doesn’t have any other obligations to keep him from doing so, who is the perfect friend.”

“….I figured I was making my own destiny,” Dipper muttered. “That because I thought it would happen it did.”

Bill-or-Not-Bill laughs. “You’re charming, Pine Tree, but you’re not that charming. You needed a push. I was there.”

“…So it was just the deal?” Dipper asks quietly. This hurts more than he’s expected to, maybe because if it had been a human tricked into being his friend, they’d have thought it was genuine. But a demon, being his friend because he had to, not even being the least bit real…that’s not what he’d—

“No.”

“No?”

Bill shakes his head. “Don’t get me wrong, it was supposed to be! But…you _are_ charming, Pine Tree. And your sister’s pretty brilliant, and your family’s completely crazy, and…” He pauses. “I’d forgotten what it was like to be human.”

“You were human?”

“Once. A long time ago. And then again, not so long ago.” Bill shrugs. “I’d forgotten, and you reminded me.”

Dipper tilts his head. “So…am I dead?”

“Yes. You’re dead. That wasn’t my doing, that was….that was unplanned. You were meant to have a long and happy life, but some drunk driver made a poor decision.” Bill clenches his fist. “I’ll get my own revenge. Don’t you worry about him.”

This doesn’t bother Dipper as much as it probably should. Nothing Bill says ever bothers Dipper as much as it probably should and this, more than anything, convinces him it _is_ Bill. 

He leans forward and presses his forehead against Bill’s. There’s no familiar heartbeat, but something thrums inside—something vaguely electric, vaguely magical, and something that smells like Bill, cheap perfume and wine and smoke. 

“Then what happens now?” he asks.

Bill grins.

-O-

Dipper watches to make sure Mabel is going to be okay. It takes a while—she lost her brother, and the one who had the most connections to her brother, all in one day. Bill’s disappearance led to some speculation he had killed Dipper, but that was proven to be untrue quickly; he’d just vanished. Mabel is distraught, but she has other friends, their family to console her; she’ll be okay.

A fun little fact about the Nightmare Realm; when you’re the ruler’s number one, life is good.

Bill is Very Important, a lot more important than Dipper first thought after their conversation in the bed. He’s the most important, in fact. Not some emissary for the king; the king himself.

He visits dreams and makes deals with the people who summon him specifically. A demon summoning gets you one of his friends; Dipper wonders aloud where Ford got that summoning spell anyway, and Bill just laughs for a while.

When he’s sure Mabel is okay, that everyone he loves will be okay, he finally relaxes. Bill has made it clear that everyone here has to be kind to him, has to _listen_ to him. Dipper has a high position of power at Bill’s side. Lots of gold jewelry and capes are involved. 

“I didn’t mean for any of this to happen,” Dipper yells one day, frustrated after yet another minor demon was heard grumbling about how the hell a _human_ became Bill’s second-in-command. 

“Neither did I,” says Bill, draping himself across Dipper’s lap, “but I’m pretty glad it did.”

Dipper doesn’t see that demon again, and this still doesn’t really bother him. It bothers him less and less as time goes on.

-O-

Dipper visits the births and deaths of those in his family and learns how to possess people at the same time. It’s not the most comfortable thing, but it’s worth it, to temporarily borrow the body of the priest that marries his sister to her long-term girlfriend, the nurse that sits by his great-uncle Stan’s side as he takes his last breath surrounded by his family, the woman who finds Ford during his death bleeding out at the hands of a monster. That last one is a win-win. The woman remembers none of it, and Dipper gets to hold his uncle’s hand as he dies.

They don’t show up in the Nightmare Realm, because all of them are good people who haven’t sold their soul. Bill tells Dipper they’re in a place known as the Mindscape, and he can go there but Dipper cannot; Dipper’s confined to the Nightmare Realm and brief jaunts up to the human realm in vessels, because he sold his soul.

“So go back on the contract,” Dipper says after Mabel’s death at eighty-eight, wanting to see his sister again, knowing that her Mindscape would be a Technicolor world of Lisa Frank and just wanting to let her know he’s always been okay.

Bill shakes his head. “Can’t. I filled my end so you gotta fill yours too. I’m doing the best I can, though.” He loops an arm around Dipper. “It’s not so bad here, is it?”

His tone is light and joking, but Dipper knows Bill better than anyone else in the multiverse. He wants to know, for real, if Dipper is happy by his side; content to have a high-ranking position in a literal hell, to rule over the kind of demons that were hardened by millennia of torture when he is the kind of demon who is a demon simply because he is dead and sometimes possesses the living. “Nah,” he says, leaning into Bill. “You know me better than that. I love it here. I’d love to see Mabel too, but I do love it here with you.”

The with you is what lets Bill relax beside him.

-O-

They do find a solution eventually; Dipper can’t leave but Mabel can. They have to go collect her when she visits, because otherwise the demons will think she’s a new arrival and take her down to the place Dipper was when he first arrived, but she visits every so often anyway. Not too often. She’s not Dipper; the Nightmare Realm bothers her, the demons frighten her, she doesn’t understand why people who sold their soul have to have it happen that they are tormented until they join their ranks. She’s not Dipper, she’s always had a heart, never been so ruthless, never been okay with violence.

She visits anyway. Once or twice she brings their uncles, their parents, Pacifica. In the Mindscapes and the Nightmare Realm they’re all young again, ranging from around twelve (their uncle’s chosen ages) to late teens (for Mabel and Pacifica) as a general thing. They visit each other’s Mindscapes, and when they think they can handle what goes down on the other side of the glass, they visit Dipper in the Nightmare Realm.

-O-

Time passes. Quite a lot of it. Dipper is a demon, that’s a thing. He loves Bill and Bill loves him and they’re the best of friends as they do their thing. He becomes more and more comfortable with it over time, welcoming new arrivals when they first get there and when they leave the rooms, and eventually no one quite remembers that he doesn’t belong, that he’s still some shy and lonely and depressed human who sold his soul for a friend and got a bit more than he bargained for. 

But it doesn’t matter. Bill got his soul. In return, Dipper got a friend, from now until the end of time, however far away that may be. 

It worked out okay in the end.

**Author's Note:**

> Avid readers of Neil Gaiman may recognize the Nightmare Realm sequence, but hey, I'm not great at the hurt, just the comfort.


End file.
